Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers in the States. This is my second Thanksgiving I've spent not in the US. Now, I don't know how many of you know my feelings on thanksgiving but I hate it. As a holiday I think it's a ridiculous premis and the traditional celebrations just lead to more cases of heart disease and type two diabetes. And yet, I'm homesick just like I was last year.

I guess it's that when you grow up with something you get use to it and when it's taken away from you you realise how very far away from home you are. I have my ups and downs with my parents, all four of them, but that still doesn't mean that I don't miss them terribly. I guess right now I'm just glad that I made the decision to go home even for just a little over winter break.

I didn't go to class today. Not because I thought I should honour thanksgiving, but because I couldn't. I know that sounds weird, but I rarely skip class (I can think of two English lectures this semester) and today I just didn't want to do it. Homesick hits me pretty hard especially when you see status updates all day about the homemade food people are going to be eating later today and all you can think about is how you don't really want to cook tonight but you will because otherwise you won't have milk in the morning and just what to do about the mattress cover that seems to have squished to the point of uselessness (I'm fairly boney so spring mattresses and me don't really get along unless there's a buffer between the two of us to help sort out our differences). 

Anyway, I have decided to make a pumpkin praline pie and the dough for the crust is sitting in my refridgerator. I have most of the ingrediants I need for baking tomorrow except the pumpkin puree. Apparently, pumpkin pie is not as big a thing here as it is back home. It's a good thing that I know exactly where to get pumkpin puree tomorrow after class. If my roleplaying game is on tomorrow then I'll take it along and invite everyone to partake in the great American tradition of eating. I thought about making some sweet potato souffle, but didn't feel like I'd have the time with the pie as well. Too bad though. The souffle calls for rum and I always feel like a big ol' grown up when I buy alcohol in the gorcery store.

Right-o, I wanted to talk a little bit about one of my English lecturers before I head off to sleep. He reminds me a lot of a mix between my junior and senior English teachers. He obviously has passion for what he does, but some of the things he says just...well the don't go over my head in the same sense as high school. I guess, I understand completely what he's saying, but what I don't get is why he says it in relation to what he said before it. It's like his slideshows are a outline of an essay, but not a finished product. By which I mean that they are organized to a point, but get a little lost here and there. He's an interesting guy to listen to and I don't mind him as a lecturer. I just kind of wish he would slow down and stop pacing from time to time.

I guess since I have nothing else to say on the subject it's that time of the post where I say all the things I'm thankful for right? Well...I'm thankful for my parents (biological and step), my brother, my friends, my four legged members of the family, and this cozy bed I get to sleep in even if the springs do leave sores on my hips every now and again.

Offline

Well, today I participated in Superteams. I'll post pictures and the story about what happened today on a later date.

I have decided to go offline for a couple of days. I shall only check my email once a day and answer anything urgent and put up the picture for my 30 Day Challenge on facebook. I want to see if I can go a week without going online every time I'm home.

I might even become a bit of a recluse and not go out this week with people (besides girls night on Thursday). We'll see if that bit happens or not. It might not, I do like to be sociably, but maybe I won't do a whole lot this week.

Anyway! Have fun without me for a week. See you next Sunday!

Some Time to Think

I'm considering going offline for a week starting on Monday. For my facebook 30 Day Picture Challenge I would probably load all the pictures for that week at once...or maybe I'll just start once the picture challenge is over and done...or maybe I'll get online long enough to upload the picture and then go offline again. That last one will probably be the one I do.

Why am I thinking of going offline?

Well, I need some time to think. I need to get back on track with my studies (I've been slacking a little this semester), I need to decide whether or not I'll be going home for Spring Holiday (which would be helped a whole lot if my brother would answer my facebook messages), and I need to think about my life and where I'm going. I would get a whole lot of reading done which is good, because I'm expecting a book (Smellorama:Nose Games for Dogs by Vivane Theby. I heard about this book from Martha G) in April and I want to study up on all the Smelling Games I can play with Arwen and Rosie when I get home over the summer. With Rosie I'm hoping to dispell some of her energy, with Arwen I hoping to increase her confidence.

A lot of thinking needs to go into going home over Spring Holiday and I need to buy my tickets by next Friday if I'm going to do it. *actually I should have booked months ago, but I'm with paying a little extra* If I go home, I could see Rocco again before he's recalled and I wouldn't have to worry about buying food for two weeks. I would come back a little before Holiday ended to look at places to live. And there's a part of me that misses Arwen a whole lot. The pros and cons are about equal right now, so maybe being offline will help me balance them better.

I also haven't been feeling myself for a while. I don't know why, but I haven't been sleeping well and I've generally just been in a sully mood. I get happy streaks, like today, but when I get home and am alone...well...I have more time to think and it gets me down. So, I kind of want to soul search for a week and see what's up with me.

Anyway, I'll let you know tomorrow if you should be expecting to hear from me for a while.

November 29: Change of Plans

I'm now flying home on the 10th! That means I'm going to get home a whole week sooner than I originally was. Why have I done this? It's not because I'm bored here or any of that, it's because I've been getting a little homesick and really wanted to go home to my dogs and cats...but not my fish...RIP Cunningham. I know, I know. I'll be missing the last week of school. It bothers me a little too, but then most of my older and wiser friends basically said, "What's wrong with missing a week?" when I told them about my apprehension of not going to class for a week. So this is what I think. Most students will miss two lectures per class through the semestre. I have missed one lecture total in all my classes because I was really, really ill. So, I've saved my "I just don't feel like getting out of bed in time to make me 9am class" and "I have a 4 hour break between my morning and my afternoon class...why go to the one hour afternoon class?" ditches and saved them for this week of getting to go home early. It did cost me a little extra to change my flight schedule, but not much...well, not more than I was thinking. And the flight I re booked was actually cheaper than the one I originally booked so I even got to pay less. So, I'm very ok with paying a little extra if that means I get to be in my own room (though, my paint job has probably been painted over) with my own dogs. :) I'm not going to say my own bed because I think they've moved my single bed and the rest of my furniture out and stuck a double bed in. But I don't know yet.

I leave for home in 11 days!!!!! When did the semestre go by?!

BTW: I got a 16 on my Art History essay! YAY! One of the highest scores in the tutorial class. If I had actually proofread the thing for spelling and grammar mistakes I probably (well, that's what he says) would have gotten a 17. I might just stick with Art History.

November 21: 2 Months

I've been here for two months now and I have to say I like the city. It's really boring, cold, and wet I'll grant you. But it's nice. I can walk to wherever I need to go and it started getting cooler about the time I arrived instead of staying excruciatingly hot until just about now. So, I don't mind the city even though I wish that there was more to do. I'm also getting right along with my studies even though it's easier than the last 4 years of high school wrapped up together. This means that there are times that I'm quite bored. I do have two essays due in the next two weeks though, so hopefully I'll have a little something to do. I'm seriously considering the second essay question for this next essay which is on poetry. The question basically states, "write a sonnet and talk about your own awesomeness." Seriously, that's pretty much what it says. It should be easy and I think I write a fairly decent sonnet.

I realised today that I'm only going to be here for 2-3 weeks. Then I'll be going home until next semestre. That's really exciting! I get to go home and see my dogs Arwen and Rosie, my cats Mia, Sylvester, and Lucy, and my Guide Dog Puppy Rocco. I'm very happy that I'll have Rocco over the whole of my break. He'll be almost a year old when I leave him in January and that's going to be a bit of a...weird thought for a while. Anyway, I'm just excited to see my friends and drive my car. I hate driving, but when I drive my car it's amazing. I love him so very much. Oh, and my family. I'll be happy to see them too.

Only 2 weeks until I get back to sunny California and see everyone again. :)

November 20: Sigh

There's not so much to blog about today I'm sorry to say. I have joined another Game in the Roleplaying Society. I went to the first session today which was mostly character generation. I decided to mix it up a little. In my Pathfinder Game, "Before Night Falls", I'm an average height and average looks elf wizard named Celia Hazelcraft of the North Wood Elves who went out adventuring to find her brother and he fiance who were lost during a war. In this game I've decided to be a drop dead gorgeous Hobbit Ranger. :D I'm particularly short, even for a halfling. My name in this game is Xigdestra Sherwood but everyone just calls me Xiggy. I'm travelling with my fiance Blubrax McBottletop (played by my friend Marlene) and his twin brother Lunx von Ampleburger (played by my friend Fredric). This is going to be interesting.

Anyway, besides that I'm really sort of missing home all of a sudden. It's not that I'm not busy. I'm having loads of fun and having quite a few late nights. I have two essays I'm meant to be working on, but at the moment I don't care enough. I'm working on getting myself to care about them so I will actually write them. I guess the reason I miss home all of a sudden is because yesterday a puppy from my puppy group left for formal training, also yesterday was the midnight premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and I wasn't with the friends I had been for the past 4 years (still haven't seen it, I will soon), today my boy turns 10 months old, and next week is Thanksgiving. I won't go into my feelings of Thanksgiving right now, but I'm slightly homesick. I won't lie. But it'll pass soon. I can tell this is just a fleeting thing because it started this morning and hasn't escalated at all, so I'm fairly certain that tomorrow I won't even feel it. Here's hoping at least. :) Sleep now...Erin stayed up past midnight for the past two nights. Sleeeeeeeeppppp....zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

A Little Taste of Home

This afternoon I went down to the Hub to meet with some International Student Advisors and get my Fresher's Packet. When I walked in I went to the Student Support and Advice Centre to ask exactly where the Global Hub was. As I was waiting in line I looked towards the waiting room and saw a guy sitting down. What attracted me most to this guy was that he had a white cane. My first thought was, "It's one of my people!" Seriously, I am more easy going and less self conscious around blind people than I am with sighted people. I thought about going to talk to him, but I didn't. I wasn't sure how he would take a girl sitting down next to him saying, "Are you blind or visually impared?" Thinking back on it now I should have talked to him. He looked a little lonely all alone in that waiting room. Anyway, I didn't talk to him, instead I went one floor up to the Global Hub.

I should explain what the Hub is. The Hub is like the Student Union on American campuses. It has internet access, a food court, a school store, registration, info centres, and all that. The Global Hub is a place for International students to sort of mingle and get to know each other. We might all be from different places, but we're all feeling the same way.

Anyway, the Grub Hub is right across the way from the Global Hub. It was then that I realized how hungry I was. I haven't been feeling too well the past few days so I haven't been eating a lot. But, boy, my stomach was talking to me then. So I went in and had a little taste of home.

I grabbed a veggie burger with chips (or fries). I sat down all alone, yes alone, and ate alomst the whole veggie burger and almost all the fries. For those of you who know me well you know that that is quite a feat for me. I have a really small stomach. Generally I can finished maybe half the burger and about a fourth of the fries. But this time I ate three quarters of both the burger and fries. And you know what? That hot meal has really settled my stomach down quite a bit. I figure that my meals since Saturday (even Friday when I got on the plane in Alabama) haven't been that great. Here it's been cereal with milk (I'm lactose intolerant but I can't find soy milk or lactaid milk) for both breakfast and dinner and two pieces of bread, one with nutella and the other with their version of "peanut butter" and jelly for lunch. Not the healthiest. So, I'm making a point to get more well balanced in my meals since I've seen what it can do to my system.

About that whole "alone" thing, I still haven't made any friends. I've met one other person sharing this flat with me and she seems nice enough, but we just aren't out of our rooms at the same time. I do know she's a fresher like me and that she's here for French/History. History was my second choice when applying so I think we might have a little something in common. Fresher's Week stuff at night generally involves going to a club. I'm not much of a clubber and I don't really drink (though it is legal for me to do so here), so I haven't gone to any clubs. They're not really a place to meet people anyway because I can't hear a gosh darn thing anyone says. I'm what you call hearing sensory deficient. What this means is that if it gets too loud or too many people are talking at once I shut down physically. The words get jumbled in my head and I just can't think. So, clubs really aren't the best place for me. If I already knew someone here and they were going I might go with them, but it's just not the place for me to meet people. I'll join a society or something and meet people that way.

Anyway, it was nice to have that little taste of home even if people were starring at me the whole time wondering why I was eating alone. I feel like I'm starting high school all over agian except worse. I knew a few people in high school already and my best friends were with me. This is going to be a challenge.

By the way, it's midnight here. I can't sleep so I decided to post something.